Royals by Rachel Hawkins (ARC)

The publisher kindly sent me a physical copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

Meet Daisy Winters. She’s an offbeat sixteen-year-old Floridian with mermaid-red hair; a part time job at a bootleg Walmart, and a perfect older sister who’s nearly engaged to the Crown Prince of Scotland. Daisy has no desire to live in the spotlight, but relentless tabloid attention forces her to join Ellie at the relative seclusion of the castle across the pond.

While the dashing young Miles has been appointed to teach Daisy the ropes of being regal, the prince’s roguish younger brother kicks up scandal wherever he goes, and tries his best to take Daisy along for the ride. The crown–and the intriguing Miles–might be trying to make Daisy into a lady . . . but Daisy may just rewrite the royal rulebook to suit herself.

Review:

I devoured this book so quickly! It was definitely a mix of the Princess Diaries 2 and What a Girl Wants. If you love those two movies, then this book will definitely be for you!

In this book, we follow the main character Daisy and the trials that come along with her sister marrying a Scottish Prince. After some crazy tabloid issues, Daisy and her parents get roped into spending time in Scotland with the Royal family. Crazy hysterics ensue when she meets her soon to be brother-in-law’s family – specifically Prince Sebastian and his band of friends, named the Royal Wreckers.

The characters in this novel were all really great, but I specifically found myself drawn to Daisy – the main character. She was totally relatable. Sometimes authors showcase being a teenager as something that they wish was the truth, but Rachel Hawkins demonstrated the truth about being a teenager – making mistakes, working a silly job, unrequited love.

Daisy was thrown into a world in which she had no idea how she fit in and so she was thrown together with Miles from the Royal Wreckers to show her the way around. I thoroughly enjoyed Miles – I can almost imagine his Scottish accent and eye rolls when he was around Daisy. The witty banter between the two of them was funny and enjoyable all the way through. I also really enjoyed Prince Sebastian; he was the misfit of the family it seems and you couldn’t help but root for him to find his place.

Daisy’s father was another character I really enjoyed. He was definitely a funny character and at times I found myself giggling at what he had just said. He seemed to not only be a good dad to Daisy and her sister, but also a friend. Daisy clearly needed a friend to help her navigate around this crazy world, and I think at times her Dad provided the opportunity to open her mind up to things she wouldn’t have tried otherwise.

The story of this novel was enjoyable but I did find not a lot happened. Now, don’t get me wrong, things did actually happen; like events and crazy tabloid occurrences. But I just kind of wanted a little bit more. Plus, the romance was a little underwhelming in this book so that’s why I brought it down to four stars instead of five. That said, her writing style was super easy and flowed great, which made it a fast and easy read.

The other thing that was fun in this story was the inset of actual gossip columns. The gossip columns played a huge role in this story as they often were what led Daisy to try new things. It was fun to have these columns placed into the novel itself – you felt like they were real stories that were happening. They were also totally realistic!

The characters really drove the story for me and I really enjoyed seeing Daisy and her family in a world that was not their own. It makes me think about how I would be in a situation like that – you’re unfamiliar with everything, paparazzi are suddenly swarming you because of your connection and you must go by the rules of those with more power.

Rating: ★★★★☆

About the Author:

Rachel Hawkins was born in Virginia and raised in Alabama. This means she uses words like “y’all” and “fixin'” a lot, and considers anything under 60 degrees to be borderline Arctic. Before deciding to write books about kissing and fire (and sometimes kissing while on fire), Rachel taught high school English for 3 years, and is still capable of teaching you The Canterbury Tales if you’re into that kind of thing.

She is married to a geologist, which means that they have incredibly strange dinner conversations (“So today at work, I wrote a chapter where killer fog, like, ATE PEOPLE.” “Huh. Well, I was chased by an angry reindeer while trying to map parts of Norway.” “Um…okay.”)

Rachel also has a little boy whose main hobbies are playing video games, running around in circles, and plotting his Future Intergalactic Take-Over.